Towns

shipwrecks and groundings

There is a good reason the Martha’s Vineyard Museum has far more shipwreck artifacts than it can display in its new exhibit Shipwrecks! Stories from Beneath the Sea. It’s because we have a lot of shipwrecks around here.

The iron steamer City of Columbus, of the Boston & Savannah Steamboat Company, Capt. S. E. Wright, sailed from Boston at 3 o’clock Thursday afternoon for Savannah, Ga., carrying 80 first-class and 22 steerage passengers, about one-third of whom were ladies and children, and a crew numbering 45 persons. Thursday night the wind blew a hurricane from the northwest, and a tremendous sea was running. At 3:45 a.m., Friday morning, with Gay Head Light bearing south half east, the vessel struck on the reef outside Devil’s Bridge buoy.

A 36.5-foot sailboat that washed ashore on Norton Point July 5 is finally off the beach after a week of removal efforts, and Edgartown police reported that several people who stripped the boat of its contents have returned the items.

Edgartown police Det. Sgt. Christopher Dolby told the Gazette this week that Running Free, the sailboat belonging to Bill Heldenbrand, 67, of St. Joseph, Mo., was pulled off the beach last Friday. During an attempted transatlantic voyage, Mr. Heldenbrand encountered a severe storm and was forced to abandon his boat between Florida and Bermuda.

Running Free, a 36-and-a-half foot sailboat that ran aground at Norton Point beach on Friday, was still languishing on the beach nearly a week later after salvage and refloating efforts failed. Meanwhile, visitors to the site were reported to be stripping the boat of its contents as it remained lodged in its sandy berth, prompting the Edgartown police to open an investigation Thursday.

Running Free, a 36-and-a-half foot sailboat that ran aground at Norton Point beach on Friday, was still languishing on the beach Wednesday morning after salvage and refloating efforts failed. Meanwhile, visitors to the site were reported to be stripping the boat of its contents.

Salvage plans are under way for an abandoned 36-and-a-half-foot sailboat that washed up at Norton Point beach on Friday night.
No one was aboard the Running Free, which was abandoned in the Bermuda Triangle on Mother’s Day.